More On Banning So-Called Canned Lion Hunting

Published: June - 2006

The move to ban so-called "canned" lion hunting in South Africa is apparently not an isolated development. Moreover, it is not necessarily an anti-hunting move, even if it is supported by anti-hunters. What occasions those observations is the surprisingly strong stand the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) took last month against the hunting of animals in any kind of manipulated environment.

Specifically, the CIC at its 53 General Assembly in Cyprus last month publicly annulled its recognition of a new world record stag taken in Bulgaria because it had received evidence that the stag was raised in an enclosure in the Alpine region and then transported to Bulgaria to be "hunted" (the quote marks, suggesting derision, appear in the CIC announcement). The CIC went on to say that it "condemns the unethical manipulation of game animals in order to produce trophies, confirms its support for fair chase hunting and urges all hunters and hunting associations to oppose such unethical, manipulative practices."

Clearly, what constitutes fair chase hunting is re-emerging as a hot issue among hunters right now, as well it should. Some of the things that have been happening recently in hunting - the "doping" of animals, for example, the shooting of game in ever smaller spaces and the translocation of animals for the express purpose of shooting them - are just asking for trouble. These excesses need to be curbed, and we need to do it ourselves before the antis organize a general uprising against us. That seems to be what CIC is saying and what the powers that be in South Africa are doing by championing an end to "canned" lion hunting.

Make no mistake, though - there is peril here. Defining fair chase is tough in a world where open space is increasingly hard to find. Honorable people with good intentions can disagree on an issue like this, and we need to be careful how raucous and public we let this argument become, as history has shown that we hunters, when we start fighting, do more........(continued)